


Small Dark Corners

by SnailArmy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Basically just a statement, Gen, The Buried - Freeform, here's my take on an avatar of the buried, i love her and i should do more with her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-30 19:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18321797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnailArmy/pseuds/SnailArmy
Summary: the Archivist gets a visitor. She is nothing like he would have expected.(The Buried pays the Institute a visit, gives a statement, leaves with minimal damage to the carpeting)Set after 132 but without major spoilers.





	Small Dark Corners

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Night Light" by the Mountain Goats. This is entirely self-indulgent and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Despite her appearance, Jon could only assume she was an avatar of the Buried. She was clearly American- a point in her favor, he supposed- what with the tacky Hawaiian shirt, backwards baseball cap, cargo shorts and bulky black combat boots. The avatars were not often chosen for their fashion sense, but even to the Archivist’s standards this was ridiculous. She was in her late teens, at most, and was making no effort to appear mature. 

The heavy stench of petrichor hung around her like a quilt and she embraced it. She stood with her feet close together and arms crossed tightly, almost compressing herself in the doorway of the archives. The light coming in around her seemed imperceptibly dimmer than it should have been. 

“May I come in?”

Jon paused. It wasn’t just that being on the other end of a question, even an innocuous one, caught him off guard. Of all the things that had made an attempt on his life recently, few of them were polite about it. 

“I… I suppose. Are you here to make a statement?” 

A laugh escaped her as she stepped into the room. Her eyes weren’t brown. Her hair was long, and tied back. The baseball cap appeared to have some sort of agricultural affiliation. With every step she took the walls seemed to close in around her, as if she was calling them closer, as if they were eager to touch her and close her in, to trap them both in the darkness. The effect was off-putting, to say the least. 

“No, but I get the feeling I won’t have much of a choice. Those big eyes of yours never want to let things stay buried, deep, where they belong.”

She took a seat on the carpet and Jon reached for a tape recorder. It was already on. 

“Statement of The Buried, regarding… the construction of an Avatar and their visit to the Magnus Archives. Statement taken direct from subject, April 1st, 20XX. Recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Begin.” 

And so she began to speak, her voice soft and rich like fertilized soil. Here is her statement. 

~~

I suppose you want me to start with my childhood. I always felt drawn to small, dark spaces. I would hide in my closet, or sleep under my bed. It always felt safer when I could feel all the walls around me, pressing in, keeping me hidden. I can remember burying my hands in bags of potting soil, all warm and wet and clinging. One time I threatened my older brother with a knife, but that’s not as relevant as you think it is. I was as normal as any other young girl with too much time and too many secrets. 

I graduated with whatever honors they cared to give me and went to college, because I couldn’t really think of anything better to do. The bare box of my dorm room that first year unsettled me in a way I couldn’t quite describe. It was like I was laid bare, for all the world to see. I couldn’t stand it. I kept the shade drawn whenever possible, made a nest for myself under my lofted bed and behind the dresser. No, not a nest. A cave. 

The school I went to had several little museums scattered across campus. Art, natural history, the like. I always wanted to visit the geology museum but could never find anyone to go with me. It was tucked in a corner of a basement in one of the older buildings on campus, and none of us were really sure how to get there. Near the end of my first year, after an exceptionally uneventful spring break, I decided to check it out for myself. 

I went to the building, Dulles Hall, after an early lunch. I hadn’t bothered to check hours of operation, but I figured noon-ish was reasonable to expect. I got into the building easy enough and started down the stairs. They were bare, concrete, and left me feeling exposed under the fluorescent lighting. I went down a flight to where the basement should have been, but there was no door, only more stairs. I took another flight down, and another, until eventually I looked up and could not see the top. They were becoming narrower, somehow, and the ceiling hung lower and lower until it grazed the top of my head with each step. The light had become faint and I could now see dirt within the plastic casing of the lights, stifling them like the walls and the stairs and the concrete that surrounded me. I don’t know why I kept crawling down. By all rights I should have turned around and gone up, but I don’t think that would have worked. I think that’s when it chose me. I was just some kid with no sense of self-preservation—I saw a hole, I wanted to be in it. Do you know what I felt, down there, in the dark and the too-close-I-cannot-breathe? I felt peace. Like I had finally found a place where no one could find me, and no one could hurt me, and I could just be. I was ready to decompose down there in the place that should not have been. I pushed my way forward, ensconcing myself deeper into the dark crevices of its heart until I could go no further. There was something blocking my path. I was curled up there for hours, possibly days, weight on my chest making it hard to breathe, nowhere for my arms or legs to go. And then the door opened, and I came tumbling out of a hall closet on the ground floor. 

I do not think I am the same as when I descended the staircase. Something changed, down there, and now when I breathe deeply I feel dust stir in my lungs and I choke. I can’t stand to see the sky anymore. My girlfriend worries about me, but she is a creature of the light and of the air and she does not deserve to be dragged down here with me. I’ve started finding tunnels in weird places. They always seem to lead me to where I need to go. That’s how I got here, in fact. What, you think I can afford to hop on a plane to London just to have a chat with some self-righteous voyeur? There’s a reason I’m here, Archivist. We need something from you. I’ve given you a statement. Information, that’s what Beholding deals in. I’m not sure what the Buried expects in return, but I’ve delivered my end of the bargain and I think it will take me home now. There are people down there. They try to resist, to fight, to dig up even when no such direction exists. We take everyone in the end, Archivist. Once Pestilence and War and Death and Watching have had their fun, everyone comes to the earth. You have escaped us once, you have no choice but to return. And your anticipation, your dread, your fear? Will make that day all the sweeter. 

~~

She stood up from the floor and brushed the dirt from her cargo shorts. Jon couldn’t remember if they had been clean when she arrived; either way, he was going to have to vacuum in here. “Statement complete,” he muttered. 

As she was opening the door to leave, she turned around. “One more thing, Archivist. You seem like a nice enough guy, so I’ll give you some advice.” Jon doubted the eccentric young woman would have anything useful to say, but he kept the tape recorder rolling. “Some things are buried for a damn good reason. Know when to stop digging.”

With that, she was gone. Jon sat at his desk impatiently. Surely she knew that he wasn’t the type to abandon the pursuit of knowledge over something as trivial as self-preservation. Still, he was touched by her concern. As far as Avatars went, she was non-threatening, almost weak. Yet she had the moxie to threaten him! As he began to log the statement he realized he never got her name. When they were in the room together he had felt her mind there for the taking, but the statement had held him at bay until it was too late. Tentatively he reached out for whatever threads of information still lingered in his mind. For once, there was nothing; it was as if a thick layer of mud had been caked over his eye. It was frustrating, and unsettling, and Jon hated how much he had come to rely on his Sight. For now, he left the name field as “the Buried” and continued his work.


End file.
